The present invention relates to the field of online shopping systems and, more particularly, to a collaborative online shopping system.
Shopping has been a social experience for centuries—from ancient marketplaces to today's outlet malls. However, much of this social interaction has been lost in the shift to Web-based or online shopping systems. In the attempt to interject more social interaction, many online shopping systems have introduced features such as wish lists, recommendation lists, user-submitted product feedback, shopping carts that are viewable by others, and universal shopping carts that aggregate products from a defined group of retailers. While these attempts provide their own benefit to online shopping, the online shopping systems lack the automated social communication aspect popularized by social networking Websites such as FACEBOOK, MYSPACE, and ORKUT, where information is automatically made available from one account holder to other account holders based on established relationships
For example, two friends, Shopper A and Shopper B, both have accounts for shopping at the same online retailer. Both shoppers have a stored shopping cart with a couple of product items, intending to make their purchases when the value of their respective shopping carts qualifies for a discounted shipping rate. Unless Shopper A and Shopper B explicitly share information about their stored shopping carts, which must occur outside of the shopping Website (e.g., lists the contents in an email or telephone call), neither will be aware that the combination of their two shopping carts qualifies for discounted shipping. Simply, the online shopping system does not “know” that Shopper A knows Shopper B or that either shopper may be interested in combining their purchases.
Newer attempts, such as that described in Great Britain Patent No. 2458388A, have focused on simulating the shopping experience in virtual marketplaces. Three-dimensional (3D) models of the shoppers are able to communicate and perform many typical shopping actions in a virtual representation of a store. However, such a graphics-intensive system incurs additional overhead for both the host system and the shopper's system to support the 3D modeling of the shoppers and virtual environment.
Although this system allows multiple users to aggregate selected product items into a single purchase with a single vendor and even split costs, it does not support a social network structure between the shoppers or the use of a universal shopping cart. Nor does this system support the ability for one shopper to apply a coupon or promotion code to the purchase to be shared among the shoppers, a very common reason shoppers combine purchases or purchase additional items. Further, a shopper viewing another shopper's shopping cart, any actions that the viewing shopper may want to take such as creating a copy of the shopping cart for their own purposes must be reiterated manually.